The Imitation Game

Having read Andrew Hodges biography of Alan Turing and having visited Bletchley Park, I was slightly concerned that The Imitation Game might be yet another film playing fast and loose with British war-time history. Fear not. Even the Poles get some credit for capturing an Enigma machine and building the early bombes.

Of course there are liberties. A film just wouldn't work with the action spread across all the actual characters involved, so there has to be some conflation. If you want the actual history then read Hodges book: Alan Turing: The Enigma (it is excellent). Instead this film uses events to show us what Turing was like, what the people around him were like, and how he interacted with them.

It's not a linear time-line. The story cleverly switches between the main war-time thread, Turing's post-war troubles and his school days. The editing is excellent: the transitions don't jar, they provide just the right information at just the right time to keep building up the layers of our understanding of the man Alan Turing.

The cast are outstanding. Charles Dance and Mark Strong are great as the establishment brass. Keira Knightly and Matthew Goode are great as contrasting "other" codebreakers. Benedict Cumberbatch is so good as awkward geniuses (in Sherlock and Parade's End) that I almost took it for granted that he would be great as Alan Turing... and he's more than that, he is awesome in this film.

Cumberbatch's performance really shows the development of Turing's character from complete loner to team-leader, from academic to hero, from trusted servant to convicted "criminal". For me he really portrayed the Alan Turing I have imagined in all I've read about him.

And as expected as Cumberbatch's performance was, an equally good and important contribution comes from Alex Lawther as the schoolboy Alan Turing. In timely flashbacks we see how Alan was bullied, how he didn't understand people and how his friendship with Christopher Morcom coloured the rest of his life. All this is portrayed wonderfully by Lawther in some of the film's most moving scenes.

The film isn't perfect as a historical drama, but as a fact-based thriller and an examination of the genius Alan Turing it is brilliant. There's quite a bit of humour... too. I highly recommend it.

PS I am proud to have played a tiny part in the Turing story as a signatory to the petitions which eventually lead to the government apology and the royal pardon which overturned his conviction for gross indecency.